


On the Lamb

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Canon Era, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-27 21:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17169494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: On a rainy day in Manhattan, eight newsies, led by David Jacobs, attempt to make lamb soup.  Nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan.





	On the Lamb

“Couldn’t you have stolen an apple or something?” Mush whispered, staring at the hunk of meat that had taken over the center of their little booth at Tibby’s. It was a huge, thick, cylindrical thing, the animal it had come from as well as the fact that it’d been snatched from one of the outdoor markets and not one of the nice butchers uptown made obvious by the hoof that remained attached. The hook that it had once dangled from remained, splinters of the wooden awning it had been attached to still feathering out from it. 

Swifty shrugged. He was drenched through from the rain falling down outside, as were all of the other assembled newsies. To say that there was a downpour going on outside would have been an exercise in modest understatement. From what David could tell the sky had become a wall of water substantial enough to make your average tidal wave flush with jealousy. 

“It’s awfully big,” Blink chimed in, trying to wipe away the water dripping from his face with the arm of his equally drenched shirt. “Bet it’d be enough for all six of us for a week or two.” 

“Don’t be dumb. It’d last one meal and we don’t got anything to cook it with anyways. Besides, it stinks.” 

That was Skittery. He poked at the meat (raw meat, David noted with horror) disdainfully, and leaned back in his chair. Little Tumbler, from his seat next to Skittery, followed his example, and licked his fingers after. 

“Don’t do that,” David said quickly. Tumbler just stared up at him, dark eyes wide and the entirety of his hand jammed in his mouth.

“Who’re you to tell him what to do?” Skittery asked.

“A friend? The kind who doesn’t want him to get food poisoning?” David said, though in truth part of him was tempted to take a jab at the meat himself. It just looked so incongruous sitting there, like it’d gotten lost and needed someone to help it find its way home and its true purpose in life. Surely its true purpose in life was not to sit in the center of a table at Tibby’s while Swifty leaned back in his chair, proud of his latest and biggest theft that week. 

“Hey Dave,” Mush nudged him, “Someone once told me I wasn’t ‘sposed to eat raw eggs, then I ate three of ‘em and was fine, so maybe they’s lying about not eating raw lamb too.” 

“If you miss a day of selling because you’re throwing up everywhere….” David started, but he lost his train of thought quickly when Les got it into his head to lean over the meat and David had to tug him away by the back of his shirt.

“It does stink,” Les announced. 

“Maybe you stink,” Tumbler countered. 

Jack chuckled at this, and pat Tumbler on the back. “Right, when’s the last time you took a shower kid?” 

Skittery gave Tumbler’s wet hair a tug, “’Bout two minutes ago I reckon. Not since going into the restaurant. I’ll give you that much.” 

“I’m tired of stealing apples and pears,” Swifty stated with a scowl. “Them’s small potatoes compared to this. You have any idea how much skill it took to get this out from under that butcher’s nose?” 

Tumbler stroked the meat lovingly as he stared up at Swifty. “It’s real pretty,” he whispered. “Wish I could get a hold of something like this.” 

“It’s bigger than you is,” said Skittery. Nobody seemed to care when Tumbler put a scrap of the skin in his mouth, though it made David’s stomach churn. 

“One of these day’s I’m gonna rob me a bank. Then I’ll be rich. Just you watch.”

“Show of hands,” Jack said. “Who here’s gonna help me break Swifty out of the Refuge after he robs a bank?” 

David put up his hand without thinking. He was the only one that did. He lowered it slowly, but Jack had already noticed and clapped him on the back enthusiastically. 

“I and Davey’ll be expecting to collect a fee for our services,” said Jack. “Dave, I’m holding you to this later on down the road. It’ll do us good, being friends with a world famous bank robber.”

“It’s exactly what I’ve always aspired to.” 

“We can go on the lam once the bulls get us figured out, just you and me Dave.” 

Something about the way that Jack said that, hand still on the small of his back, made David’s stomach do flip flops, but that was forgotten when Jack’s eyes suddenly alighted on the meat in the center of the table, and he broke out in a peal of laughter. 

“It’s funny ‘cause that’s lamb and he just said ‘on the lam’,” Les explained a minute later, rolling his eyes, because everybody else was laughing and David wasn’t. David just nodded, and wondered how these were the people he’d made friends with. That wasn’t to say he regretted it at all, or that he didn’t adore being part of the newsies, but sometimes he wondered. 

“We could cook it at my house,” David suggested, once the laughter had calmed down to a dull roar. “We have some vegetables. Maybe… maybe we could make lamb soup?” 

This got Jack’s attention. “Thought you didn’t approve of stealing.” 

David rolled his eyes. “Hey Swifty, if I ask you nicely and explain to you why it’s wrong, are you going to return the lamb?” 

“Nope.” 

David shrugged. “I’m powerless here. We might as well cook it. All in favor of cooking it, hands up.” 

All things considered, David’s vote went a lot better than Jack’s had. Everybody but Tumbler put up their hands, and Tumbler was too distracted pouring sugar from the jar on the table into his palm and licking it off to concentrate, so David considered it at success.

The little group stood up as one, Blink and Mush discussing how much they liked soup, Skittery grumbling about the weather, and Jack positively beaming at David. Tumbler pocketed a sugar jar, and David reached out just in time to keep Les from doing the same. They all left money on the table to pay for the coffees and teas they’d ordered to try and ward off the rainy cold, and then headed back out into it, leg of lamb swinging audaciously from Swifty’s shoulder. 

Les nearly tripped several times on the way home. Jack had had the idea of putting Les in David’s raincoat that morning, and wrapping up their papes in Les’s smaller one to keep them dry. It would have been brilliant, if anybody had been willing to brave the rain to buy their papers. As things were, heading back to the Jacobs apartment and making an attempt at cooking dinner seemed like a much more fruitful way to spend the afternoon.

—-

“Wipe your feet before coming in,” David ordered. The other newsies did, but it didn’t help much. The doormat was no match for the sheer amount of mud that eight boys could collect walking the streets of New York on a rainy day. The grime wasn’t limited to their boots, either. On days like today it covered their entire persons, and even fastidious David was far from being clean. 

The Jacobs apartment was relatively warm, at least. The wood stove had been burning that morning, and the heat hadn’t flown out completely. Nobody was in the house just now – most likely David’s mother and Sarah were off delivering the clothes that they worked mending, or else picking up new shirts to patch or socks to darn. David’s father’s arm never had healed correctly, but now that it didn’t seem that any further improvement was likely, he spent most of his days out around the city looking for someone – anyone respectable at all – to hire him, so his boys could go back to school. 

“This place is like a palace,” Mush exclaimed, wide eyes making it clear that a mother and sister grubbing for menial work while a father searched desperately for a way out of unemployment was the very farthest thing from his mind. “Davey, why didn’t you ever tell us you lived in a palace?” 

“This is the life,” said Blink, flopping down on the bed in the middle of the dining room, wet clothes, muddy boots and all. 

David didn’t know exactly what to say to any of it. He’d never felt comfortable having guests over. The one time that Sarah had had a girl from school over, the little twit had refused to use the bathroom because it had been separated from the rest of the house by a curtain instead of a door, wet herself, and been sent home crying. Granted Sarah and her friend had been seven at the time, and David only six, but it had been more than enough to make David aware that other kids wouldn’t approve of the way he and his family lived. 

The newsies were on the opposite end of the spectrum, where the mere fact that the kitchen had a cabinet with cups in it made it seem as though David had been living in the lap of luxury all of his life, but he didn’t really feel any less strange about the differences there. 

Luckily Jack seemed to understand. He looked over at David for half a second, smiled, and started explaining to Mush and Blink where the different things in the house had come from. The quilt had been made by their grandmother in the old country, the silk flowers on the mantel rescued from a dumpster and meticulously cleaned, the photos taken of far away aunts and uncles that David had never met but his mother remembered fondly… nearly every item in David’s house had a story, and Jack had been there often enough to know all of them and be a better tour guide than David himself. 

That left David alone in the kitchen to try and figure out how the soup was going to be made. The first step was chopping some carrots, which he did admirably with Skittery and Swifty’s help. The second was to remember that he’d forgotten to have everybody wash their hands before handling food, and march them off to do that. The third was to cut up the meat. By this time Blink and Mush had finished looking about the house, and had wandered over to help him. 

“Here,” David said, handing Blink one of the knives. “Help chop up the meat.” 

Blink stared at the blade, which was sharp and made out of shiny steel, clearly quite taken with it. He swiped at the air experimentally a couple of times, causing everybody to back away. 

“It’s like a pirate’s sword,” Blink explained happily. “Just like it.” 

“You’d know,” said David, as he tried to peal the skin off of the lamb leg. 

“Why’d I know? I ain’t never seen a pirate. Just imagined and…” 

“Your…” David started, gesturing towards his own eye. Even so, it took Blink a second before he touched his own eye patch and realized what David was getting at. Blink took a step forward that had David regretting ever opening his mouth, and a second that had him regretting handing Blink a knife of all things. 

Mush was standing in front of him before he took his third. “You’se got a real good imagination,” he said, big grin on his face. “Least I always likes your stories. Hey, I’ve got a knife too…” 

With that Mush reached for the knife David had been using to dice vegetables, and took off running across the room with it. Blink barked out a laugh and then gave chase, leaving David slightly mystified. 

“I…” he called out, once he could speak. “Guys… the meat! We can’t have sword fights in the house, we’ll all get killed!” 

There was around a chase the room, and at first David worried that he’d only encouraged more sword fighting and everybody was about to take up arms. Les already had his wooden one out, and Tumbler was making a dash for the kitchen when Jack grabbed him around the waist.

“You heard Dave. No sword fighting. His house, his rules. Go help him cut up the meat.” Jack ordered. Knives, once held in the air in swashbuckling style, went down, and Mush and Blink came over to join David in the task of stripping the lamb meat off the bone.

A few minutes later and David was given yet another reason to regret giving Kid Blink a knife.   
He couldn’t say exactly how it happened, but all at once the knife drove into Blink’s finger with a force and precision that made it seem as if it’d been possessed by an evil spirit. Blink yelped, and dropped the knife, which fell straight down onto his boot, went through the leather there, and changed his yelp to a scream.

—– 

An hour later, and the lamb soup wasn’t coming along very well at all. David had wrapped up Blink’s hand in his bath towel, and now he was sitting in Sarah’s rocking chair while Mush helped him hold his hand up above his head to keep it elevated. As it had turned out Blink’s boots were about three sizes too large for his feet, and the knife had only pierced the edge where Blink’s toes should have been but weren’t. The scream, David assumed, had been out of the realization that he’d now be cursed to forever deal with a soggy squelching foot whenever it rained out… and honestly, that was the kind of thing that David could completely understand screaming about. Very little was more bothersome than having wet feet, especially if the water only got into one shoe and it was uneven.

Tumbler was jumping on one of the beds, covering the quilt in muddy footprints. Swifty had fallen asleep smoking in another, only to wake up and yell at David to leave him alone when he’d come over and tried to discretely remove the cigarette from his mouth. Les, who was normally the very opposite tidy, had stared longingly after Tumbler for a minute and then actually started trying to wash some of the mud off the floor, something that David had never seen him do under anything less than threats of never being able to go out with Jack again. 

That meant that the kitchen staff, such as it was, was left limited to David, Jack, and Skittery. At least most of the work was done. The carrots and lamb were nicely chopped and swimming in a pot of water atop the stove. David was crouched underneath it, trying to figure out which combination of handles would turn on the gas. 

“Is the stove burning yet?” David asked.

“Nope,” said Jack.

“Don’t think it’s gonna,” said Skittery. 

David sneezed. He’d always been under the impression that his mother was particularly good at vanquishing spider webs from their home environment, but the condition of things by the gas tank left him disillusioned. He shuddered and considered crushing the eight legged creature who scuttled by under his nose, but the unfortunate fact was that that would involve touching it, something that David couldn’t quite bring himself to do. David gave the handle another twist. 

“What about now?” 

Silence.

David stood up and right into the arm that Jack had ready to sling around his shoulder. 

“Tell you what Dave, that lamb really did smell weird. How’s about we just eat some of these carrots?” To demonstrate a point, Jack reached out to pluck one of the carrots from the pot, and David slapped his hand away. 

“Careful. He don’t want you to get burned by cold water,” Skittery deadpanned. 

“I want him to practice a little food safety.”

“Must be nice to be able to be so picky ‘bout what you eat… you know, seein’ as there’s always food in your house and some lady who lives just to cook it for you,” Skittery added, staring down at the cold water like he had a personal vendetta against it. 

“Right,” David said. “It’s great. And if Les and I don’t sell enough, there’s no money to buy the food, and no money to pay the rent, she gets kicked out on the street along with everyone else in this house, and it’s our fault.” 

David shut his mouth quickly, momentarily stunned at his own outburst. Jack gave his shoulder a quick squeeze, before David turned to the spice cupboard.

“Besides,” David said, “the soup isn’t ready to cook.” He gathered every spice in the cupboard in his arms, and handed them all to Jack. “Here, put these in the water. Whatever you think will taste nice. Get creative. And Skittery,” David reached into the basket where they kept the onions and potatoes, retrieved an onion, and tossed it in Skittery’s general direction. “Here. Cut this.” 

David, for his part, grabbed a couple of apples that his mother usually saved to give him and Les as snacks on when they came home from work early, cut them up, and put the plate of them on the desk near Sarah’s work area. They were gone in an instant. Blink, Mush, and Swifty each took a slice, and Tumbler inhaled the rest. David returned to his place underneath the stove, and continued to fiddle with the gas. 

“Whoa!” Skittery exclaimed suddenly. 

“Hey Davey, it’s…” 

“Is it working?” David asked. 

Jack laughed, “Yeah, come up and see. Skittery’s so happy he’s crying.” 

——

David’s dad was the first member of the Jacobs family to come home for the evening. He looked tired and wet as he surveyed the crowd that had filled his home, and the damage therein. David felt a twinge of guilt at that, but met him at the door anyway.

“We made dinner,” he explained, with a glance behind him at the other guys. David didn’t know what it was in his face that made his father’s expression soften, but he nodded, patted his shoulder, and told him that it smelled good and he couldn’t wait to try it. 

Mama and Sarah weren’t far off. They entered the door looking almost as wet as the boys, for they’d had to lay their umbrellas on top of their work baskets to keep the clothes from becoming sodden with rainwater. Wet clothes weren’t a problem if it only rained for one day, but if the bad weather persisted for too long there was always the possibility of them growing mould. 

“What on earth have you let Les get into?” Sarah exclaimed, dropping her basket with a loud thud. Then, noticing the boys assembled about the room, she shook her head with one of the more accusatory “never minds” David had heard in his life. 

His mother just made a face like she’d walked into the scene of a particularly gruesome murder, before shaking her head and gathering David in a big hug that he had the good sense not to act embarrassed by even with everybody watching him. 

“You have so many friends!” She said, tugging at one of his curls. “Jack, dear, you come over here too,” she added, after she’d released David. 

Jack had already started in on his normal hobby of making kissy faces at Sarah, and David couldn’t say he was sorry to see his hand freeze somewhere in the middle of tucking a damp lock of hair behind her ear. He was maybe a little sorry for the look on Sarah’s face when he left off whatever he was saying to her mid-sentence and come bounding over to the other side of the room, but he definitely wasn’t sorry enough.

If anybody thought it was strange for Jack Kelly, unofficial leader of the Manhattan newsies, to let David’s mother envelope him in a firm hug, they didn’t say so. Then again, Jack did everything with such ease that he could probably sprout wings and fly around the room singing opera, and have nobody think anything was the least bit off. Even so, David couldn’t help but notice the way that Skittery looked down at the ground as his mother whispered something to Jack about looking after himself, or the way that Tumbler stared after them with a hunger in his eyes that had nothing to do with food. 

There was something very nice about the way that Jack helped David’s mother with her coat, then led her to the table explaining that dinner was ready and he’d helped, almost as proud of it as if he were a little kid bringing his parents breakfast in bed for the first time. David was quick to make it known that the other boys had helped too, though he left out the part where Swifty’s method of helping had been petty theft, and the all the times they’d all almost died in attempting the mundane task of making dinner. 

Mother took over the serving, inviting all of the boys over to the table with steaming hot bowls of the soup that they’d made. Mush, Blink, Tumbler, and Jack ended up at the sitting with them, while Skittery and Swifty hung back against the wall, as though not quite sure where and how they could fit into the scene. 

It wasn’t terribly good soup. The meat was tough, and the watery broth tasted of pepper and cinnamon. The boys seemed to like it though, and even Skittery didn’t have any complaints.

David surveyed the damage to the apartment as he ate his own soup. There were spots of mud and blood all over the place, and a lamb bone on the kitchen counter, and everything was as disheveled as David himself. He’d have his work cut out for him cleaning up, David knew, but for now he was happy. It was a nice change to take his evening meal with all of his family, and not just the members who lived in his home.


End file.
